It's not every week we get an MP turning up in the Film&Music comments threads. But last week Diane Abbott weighed in on the subject of the "Mammy" role in Hollywood movies – the loyal, black housemaid – a character given a new treatment in The Help, which Xan Brooks wrote about last week. "I enjoyed the book. And I will go and see the film," Abbott wrote. "In the 1950s 80% of Black American women were maids, so it is right and relevant that someone writes about that reality. But it is still sad that, 60 years after Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for playing a black maid in "Gone With the Wind", this year's prize role for a black actress is … playing a maid."

Actually, suggested insomniac506, "Mammy" was not always the simplistic caricature – verging on a simpleton – Xan's piece suggested: "If you're going to write an article on representations of 'Mammy', and not talk about Juanita Moore in Douglas Sirk's film Imitation of Life (1959), there's not really much point reading this article. Sirk had the audacity to take the role of the devoted black servant, selflessly tending to Lana Turner's needs, and turn her into a human being. As Turner says to the dying Moore at the end of the film: 'I didn't know you had so many friends', Moore responds, sweetly but devastatingly: 'You never asked'. Mammy characters have always been vivid and complex – it's just that their masters and mistresses never bothered to find out how." We take your point about Imitation of Life, but are you suggesting we are meant to judge the portrayals by what we might infer about the character? Surely we should assess the film-makers by what they actually put on the screen?

A British slant came from Gwan, who pointed out a portrayal of "the help" currently occupying a large proportion of the nation every Sunday night: "I'm not trying to make any sorts of parallels with slavery or institutional racism, but the trope of the devoted servant who would give his/her last penny and bend over backwards to help his/her master is all over English literature and still survives in things like Downtown Abbey today. All about assuaging the guilt of the privileged classes."

In case we were in danger of all getting a bit thoughtful, we got a reminder of our own prejudices. Yes, magicman, we're all "lazy journalism Guardian liberals". We live to laze liberally, literally.

Next up, a public service announcement. Joe Queenan's article about the film Contagion, and its habit of missing commas from location captions (London England, or Minneapolis Minnesota) was written light-heartedly. So, smutter100, when you complain that "I disagree with saying that this sort of movie is 'doing an immense public service to us all' through its information about bacterial science," please remember Joe was joking. And BigbadD, when you note Joe's opening sentence ("Children, it is widely known, get almost all their demographic and geographical information from movies", then ask, "Er, evidence please?", remember Joe was joking.

Sensible advice came from owaingr: "Can we not have a convention where, unless there's a good reason to think otherwise, the city named is the most notable one of that name? If it really is London, Ontario then mention it. Otherwise, London is the capital of the UK, just London, nowhere near Canada."

We must apologise, though, to the proud residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose city was traduced by Joe for maybe being a little less lively than London (England, not Ontario). "Minneapolis/St. Paul is consistently ranked one of the best areas to live in the United States," wrote bret0006. "Forbes Magazine cites the stable economy … " Look, I'm going to cut you off there. I'm sure Minneapolis is great, but we're talking about a city so cold in winter they had to build skyways from one building to another so residents wouldn't have to go outside. Brrrr. I'll stick with London, thanks.